When he fired the first scuds into Israel, I took it as a threat that he'd let loose something evil-doing large if he was invaded.
But then he seemed not to have much really to go with - a few too many were launched. Then he wasn't invaded, which I took to mean that the USA was happy to keep his oil off the market - huge profits for oil companies such as my alma mater, BP Oil, Exxon, and others. And that maybe there was a threat of WMDs being plopped onto Israel. And that the process could get too icky, as it has in fact done.
It wasn't a really good test of whether he had nukes of not, but I decided that he probably didn't.
Then in the 1990s, he was hassled and inspected so much that I decided he really didn't have anything going.
I don't count a few chemical bombs as WMDs - too pathetic to do much damage. Some polonium 210 would be fun, but mustard gas and the like is so last century, [19th century really].
It all added up to just what he have actually ended up with - an invasion which was unnecessary because King George II wanted to show Saddam who is boss, to get a bit of revenge and to gain more control of oil; stuff like that.
I didn't mind the invasion as Iraq was run on dog eat dog principles so if a more civilized dog comes along, I'm okay with that. Though it didn't seem the best approach. A NUN takeover would have been much better and if Saddam had some clues, he might have been able to pull that off. But he didn't.
Briefly,
Mqurice |
